Unholy Fire (7 page)

Certainly, she did not look the part of a wayward wife. There was innocence in her smile, and she seemed completely unspoiled. Her husband, a priggish-looking man with poached eyes and a receding chin, was sitting on the other side of her. Next to him was the only other man in uniform. He introduced himself as William Spellman.

Mr. Bliss asked me where I had gone to college, and I told him.

“Have you knowledge of syntactics?” he asked hopefully, after I had shaken his clammy palm.

I had no idea what he was talking about

“The signs and symbols in both natural and artificially constructed languages,” he said tartly. “And semiotics?”

When I shook my head in confusion, his lips curled downward, and he didn't say another word.

Mrs. Warden removed the lid of the tureen, and a fragrance rose toward me that smelled almost spiritually rewarding. Soft chunks of lamb and beef were submerged in a good, brown gravy and surrounded with mushrooms caps, carrots, turnips, onions, and potatoes. Platters of hot sour cream biscuits and bowls of creamed spinach rounded out the simple fare, and I found myself falling to the meal with genuine relish.

The discussion at dinner centered on several of the new generals who were now making their mark on the war, including Philip Kearny and John Reynolds. Captain Spellman was particularly excited about the rise of General Joseph Hooker.

“There was an account in the
Journal
today that recounted how he won the sobriquet of ‘Fighting Joe' at the Battle of Williamsburg,” he said, his voice marked by the Beacon Hill cadence of the Boston aristocracy. “Basically, he attacked their whole army with just his one division and might have won the day, too, if General McClellan had supported him. Instead, he lost 20 percent of his division in the attack.”

“I happen to believe that General McClellan is the greatest soldier of the age,” said Mr. Massey.

“Then why don't you tell us why the greatest soldier of the age chose to put his headquarters fourteen miles behind the battle line?” said the silver-haired blind man at the far end of the table. “McClellan had no idea what was even happening.”

The man's chin and mouth bore terrible marks of disfigurement, although a full beard covered much of it. In spite of his infirmities, he ate his meal without difficulty in precise, economical movements.

“From what I have read about General Hooker,” continued Mr. Massey, “he seems to reserve all of his fighting ability for drunken brawls in this city's worst dens of iniquity. You should be reading the
Sentinel.
”

“I wouldn't wrap a fish in that newspaper,” said Captain Spellman.

Mr. Massey was undeterred.

“The man was a hellion at West Point,” he went on in a superior tone, “and in the Mexican War he apparently spent most of his time in houses of ill-repute.”

“Lies,” said the silver-haired man, harshly. “He is the finest fighting general we have. Loyal to his men, personally brave, and he never asks them to go where he won't lead. If McClellan had supported him at Williamsburg, we would be celebrating the end of the war in Richmond right now.”

“And how would you know?” retorted Mr. Massey, with sarcasm.

The blind man carefully folded his napkin and put it down in front of him.

“Because I was with him in the class of ‘37 at the Point.… And because I was with the army in Mexico when he led the attack of Hamer's Brigade through the Mexican artillery fire at Monterey,” he said without pause, “and because I was with him when the Voltigeurs went over the barricades at Chapultepec and ended the war.”

He stood up from the table, and replaced his chair in its proper place.

“Joe Hooker was the only first lieutenant in the whole army to be brevettted three grades up to lieutenant colonel for his gallantry in the three major battles of that war,” he said, staring fiercely through his sightless eyes at Mr. Massey. “Since I am leaving on the morrow, let me say it now. You, sir, are an ass.”

As he slowly made his way out of the dining room, Mrs. Warden's servant girl passed him on her way in bearing the dessert, which consisted of an apple crisp, warm from the oven, and topped with clotted cream.

As I stared down at my portion, I thought of what it might have been like to serve under a fighting general like Joe Hooker, a man who led from up front and knew how to fight a battle, instead of under a vainglorious fool like Edward Baker.

Although I tried to do justice to my dessert, the craving for laudanum began to take possession of me before the rest of the dishes were even cleared. I realized it was the first full day since I had entered the hospital more than six months earlier that I had not consumed my regular dosings.

The temperature of my skin seemed to be rising by the minute. Perspiration began to form at the roots of my hair. A few moments later, it was soaking the scalp and dripping down the back of my neck. Looking up from my plate, I realized that Mrs. Massey was trying to gain my attention.

“Your color is quite alarming, Lieutenant. Have you been ill?” she asked, with genuine concern in her eyes.

“Yes. I just came from the hospital,” I said.

She nodded knowingly. By then there were thousands of us wandering the city.

“Is there an apothecary nearby?” I whispered to her.

“Yes, but I doubt it would be open at this hour. What do you need? Perhaps, I can lend you something,” she said. “Is it for pain?”

Even as I nodded, I regretted it. If everyone in the house already knew she was in love with another boarder, how could she be counted on to keep my secret? Farther down the table, I heard raised voices. Her husband was now in a heated discussion with Captain Spellman.

“I believe in the cause of freedom for the colored as much as the next man,” said Mr. Massey, his adam's apple bobbing up and down. “Nevertheless, the Greeks cherished slavery. In fact, Plato and Aristotle believed it was vital to an ordered society.”

“But we have made two thousand years of human progress since then,” asserted Captain Spellman.

“Perhaps,” responded Mr. Massey, “but in their infinite wisdom, our own Founding Fathers decided to guarantee slavery in the Constitution. I refer you to Article one, sections two and nine. The Southern states are only demanding their rights under the Constitution.”

I felt my nerves beginning to give way, and it was all I could do not to bolt from the table. Mrs. Warden was eyeing me closely from the kitchen door.

“I don't think an issue like slavery can ever be compromised when one side views the Negro as a human being and the other sees him as a good head of livestock,” said Captain Spellman, his cheeks turning red with anger.

“You see the colored man as a human being, then,” Mr. Massey replied.

My head felt as if it was going to explode, and I knew that if I didn't leave the table at that moment, I would break down in front of everyone.

“Please excuse me,” I mumbled, almost reeling as I headed for the back staircase. I barely made it to the door of my room, fumbling for the key and then staggering inside. Something behind me momentarily blocked out the lamplight from the hall, and then I heard her lilting voice behind me. She must have come up the front staircase right after I left the dining room.

“It will be all right, Lieutenant,” said Mrs. Massey. “Lie down now. I will bring you something for the pain.”

As soon as I was on the bed, my body began to shudder, just as it had during those first long nights in the hospital. The tremors started in my hands, rapidly moving up my arms to the rest of my body, coming in short, staccato bursts until I thought I would split apart.

The door to the hallway opened, and she was back again.

“Here,” she said, raising my head and putting a spoon to my lips. “This will help you.”

I didn't need her to tell me what it was. I recognized the earthy fragrance of the opium and felt the raw authority of the alcohol as it coursed down my throat. But of what value was a spoonful, my demented brain cried out. She was holding the bottle in her other hand. I seized it from her grasp and tilted it to my mouth, gulping the mixture down as greedily as a man dying of thirst. There was less than a pint left in the bottle, and it was gone in a few seconds.

“Oh, you poor soul, you poor soul,” she murmured, stroking my forehead.

The shuddering finally subsided, and I was still again.

“I must go,” she said gently.

“You have saved me, Mrs. Massey,” I said. “I am in your debt.”

“My name is Adele,” she said, softly closing the door behind her.

I lay awake all that night facing the enormity of what I had become. As the gray dawn crept slowly into my room, I silently swore that I would never again be without the one thing I needed to survive, which was a steady source of laudanum.

My first foray into the netherworld of an addict produced a satisfactory result. One didn't have to be an investigator for the provost marshal to know that the easiest place to find laudanum would be at a hospital. There was a new one just ten minutes on foot from Mrs. Warden's. Formerly a government office building, it took up a whole city block on Seventh Street and was already brimming with hundreds of army casualties.

The morning after my breakdown, I found the man I was looking for in a saloon on Sixth Street that was frequented by the hospital staff. For agreeing to supply me with two quarts of laudanum, I promised to pay the young attendant ten dollars. Two hours later, I was on my way home with the hoard that he had brazenly stolen from the dispensary. I tried not to think about the men who might be suffering without it, and vowed that I would find another source as soon as possible.

On Monday morning I started my job at the Provost Marshal General's Department. Mrs. Warden informed me that a military van regularly traversed the route from the War Office on Seventeenth Street to the asylum. I rarely had to wait more than fifteen minutes for transportation to and from work.

On my first morning, Val Burdette explained the procedures he wanted me to follow in reviewing court-martial cases. It was my job to confirm the factual basis for the pending charges that had been brought. The first step was to interview the accused. If the person admitted guilt, I was to try to ascertain whether or not there were extenuating circumstances in the matter. If the accused claimed innocence, I was to use my initiative in determining whether the evidence was sufficient to bring the matter forward to a military tribunal. My legal colleague in the office, Harold Tubshawe, was available for consultation.

As it turned out, the overwhelming number of those accused were clearly guilty of the crimes they were charged with. Occasionally, I would conclude that there was an extenuating reason for what they had done. Val Burdette would take my findings and recommendations into account before deciding whether to turn the case over to the Judge Advocate General's Office for prosecution.

In that first month, I handled twenty-seven investigations, most of them involving the court-martials of soldiers accused of desertion, cowardice, theft, bounty jumping, embezzlement, sexual deviancy, drunkenness, and assault. I also investigated the dealings of two small contractors who were accused of selling shoddy equipment to the army and one case of bed-wetting.

I awoke each morning to the aromatic splendor of Mrs. Warden's freshly baked breads and pastries as the smell drifted up the back staircase and slowly filled my room. My appetite returned like a lost muse, and by August, I had gained back much of the weight I had lost in the hospital. My cheeks filled out, and my eyes emerged again from their sockets. In fact, it would have been hard for a stranger to look at me and know that I had ever been wounded. There were only two constant reminders of what had happened to me on the windswept plain above Ball's Bluff.

The first was revealed each time I disrobed and saw the intricate network of jagged lines that were etched in livid red across my abdomen. The second was the fact that I was consuming a steady flow of opiates laced with grain alcohol every twenty-four hours. Although I was always under the influence of opium, it did not prevent me from functioning in the job I was assigned to do.

My routine did not vary in any material way from one day to the next. While shaving each morning in my room, I consumed the first cup of laudanum in the collapsible tin mug my mother had sent me upon my enlistment in the army. After going downstairs to breakfast, I would return to my room for a second measure. Then I would go to my office in the asylum.

At work, I would wait until shortly before my lunch break at 11:30, and then adjourn to the washroom down the hall from my office. There I would remove the bottle labeled “disinfectant” that I regularly replenished and kept hidden in a crevice behind the corner sink, fill one of the paper cups next to the water crock, and then go to one of the thunderboxes to consume the laudanum in relative safety. At around three every afternoon, I would go back to the washroom for another cup.

Upon returning to Mrs. Warden's in the military van, I would avail myself of another mug in my room before going down to supper. Back upstairs, I would have a final measure at around eight o'clock. On those long, sweltering summer evenings, the sun would still be streaming in the windows when I stripped off my uniform, closed the curtains, and fell naked across the bed. On rare occasions, if the black hole of opium-induced oblivion proved elusive, I would supplement the usual ration until I finally passed out.

During that time I never went to a play or concert, never read a book or newspaper, never attended church, and never took part in exercise or joined friends for a meal at a restaurant. I had no friends. I saw no one outside my office or the rooming house. My only knowledge of what was happening in the world came from conversations I overheard at work or around the dining room table at Mrs. Warden's.

I knew that General McClellan had failed in his attempt to lay siege to Richmond in June and had been replaced by Pope, who suffered another great defeat near Manassas in August. A few days later, the flood of wounded came streaming back into the hospitals around Washington like a bloody tide. The slaughter was so great that the Sanitary Commission ended up pitching a hospital tent on the grounds of the asylum. The familiar stench of physical corruption assaulted my nostrils every time I left the building for the next two weeks.